Guide to the Fallen

Chapter One: Arrival

Admeri Tryst woke to a new kind of existence. Somehow, he remembered death; though it had been nearly instantaneous, it had also been painful beyond words. The closest way to imagine it, he thought, was as if he had been stabbed by thousands of fiery knives, electrocuted and crushed all at once, and that still failed to capture the true agony. Funny the detached way he thought about it now. But one thing bugged him: that he was thinking about it at all indicated this death had never happened. One didn't think once one was dead, unless one believed in the Afterlife. But the people who believed in that crap were crazy; it must've just been a dream, eerily real. Only a dream.

That meant he was still alive, which left him wondering where he was. Black speckled with twinkling points of light, it was like nowhere he had ever experienced, except space, but then he had worn an envirosuit to keep him alive. Now he just wore the most basic of Navy uniforms. Definitely not in space, then.

Almost as soon as he'd convinced himself he wasn't in space, Admeri began having second thoughts. When he tried to move, he just floated, slowly spinning and drifting through... something. His only orientation was that down was where his feet happened to be floating at that point in time, and so it was constantly changing. He closed his eyes and forced away the nausea rising in his gut. Sometime later, the sickness banished, he once more opened his eyes and stared into the emptiness.

Eventually, with nothing better to do, Admeri began to swim, since if he was floating, maybe it was like water. Despite his best efforts, from windmilling his arms to simply treading deliberately, he didn't move. When he finally gave up, he found he wasn't out of breath as he'd expected he would be with all the effort he'd expended. In fact, he wasn't breathing at all. That simple fact shocked Admeri like nothing else had; he was a human. He needed to breathe, and so he tried to, without success. He expanded his lungs, but nothing came in; he contracted them, but he didn't exhale. He tried panting, he tried slow, deep breaths; he even tried to hyperventilate. None of it worked; it was as if there was no air.

Dreaming, he decided with the last of his rational thought. He must still be dreaming. Maybe he'd had a dream inside a dream, and that was why he was so disoriented. All he had to do was wake up. It shouldn't be that hard. Once one realized he was dreaming, he woke up, right? Right?

Nothing changed. Admeri just drifted a little more. And he began to cry.

"Welcome to the Afterworld, Ensign Tryst. It's going to take you a few minutes to overcome the shock of your arrival; it was quite rough one, as such things go."

Admeri's head whipped around, not towards the voice since it seemed to come from everywhere, but searching for it nonetheless. Still all he saw was the blackness.

"Calm down," the voice spoke again. "You're not going to figure anything out all riled up like that, and trust me, you've got a lot you need to figure out."

This time, Admeri responded. "Where are you? Who - What are you?" he demanded.

"You should be able to figure that out, Ensign. Just take a moment to think about it. I've told you where you are, after all. Your lack of belief doesn't make this nonexistent. But to start with, you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that you're dead, Admeri."

"Dead?"

"Yes, very dead. I'm sorry to say you decompressed in the vacuum of space. That's really one of the worst ways to make the transition to the Afterworld. Very disorienting. However, as much as I pity you, there's only so much I can say and do. I am, after all, only a guide. Not your Guardian Angel."

Admeri buried his face in his hands. "Dead?" he muttered again. This time, the voice didn't respond, but even through his confusion and terror, Admeri sensed that it, whatever it was, seemed to be growing exasperated with his incomprehension. The lack of obvious empathy finally pulled him back to rational thought, anger overcoming the fear and loss.